I never understood why people just didn't exercise restraint. No one is forcing anyone to either A) read his post or B) respond to them.
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Under normal circumstances, a person with an extreme point of view would make his own threads, or make his points primarily in relevant threads. Then we could have threads with titles like "Solich is the best coach in the MAC" or "Time for Solich to retire?". Then people interested in one discussion or the other would open those threads, while those not interested would bypass them.
Had this been what happened, I would entirely agree with your point above, but that's not the way it happened. Instead, if someone wanted to talk about Civil war history, or hamburger prices, the thread would get thread-jacked, not to some random, partially related topic like pizza specials, but to a specific, targeted topic.
That made it impossible for anyone to read the forum in any thread without someone being in their face, and without the constant conflict. Many people found that unpleasant. It's not those that argued with Monroe that left, by the way. Most of those people are still here. It's the ones that came here for a pleasant diversion, perhaps contributed to a discussion here or there, while the dropped in, that left. When someone was in their face, in every thread, BA ceased to be a pleasant diversion for them. I bet if you looked at people that used to visit, but who no longer do, most of them have between 50-300 posts.
To me, it's a simple matter of manners. Suppose you had a party at your house every month. Suppose that as soon as each guest arrived, one guest made it a habit to get in their face and rant about some topic, and the same guest did the same thing each month. After awhile, people would stop thinking the parties were fun, and stop coming. That leaves you two choices, really. Stop having parties, or stop inviting that one guest.